Quicken, bring to life. Debtors were often let out of prison at the coronation of a new king; but creditors never paid by him. The word here omitted is quite illegible. It appears to have some reference to the language of the Highlanders. That it was rough and outlandish is apparent from the reprimand of Sir Thomas. By this deposition it would appear that Shakspeare had formed the idea, if not the outline, of several plays already, much as he altered them, no doubt, in after life. The greater part of the value of the present work arises from the certain information it affords us on the price of small needles in the reign of Elizabeth. Fine needles in her days were made only at Liege, and some few cities in the Netherlands, and may be reckoned among those things which were much dearer than they are now. Mr. Tooke had not yet published his Pantheon. This was really the case within our memory. It was formerly thought, and perhaps is thought still, that the hand of a man recently hanged, being rubbed on the tumour of the king’s evil, was able to cure it. The crown and the gallows divided the glory of the sovereign remedy. And yet he never did sail any farther than into Bohemia. Smock, formerly a part of the female dress, corresponding with shroud, or what we now call (or lately called) shirt of the man’s. Fox, speaking of Latimer’s burning, says, “Being slipped into his shroud.” Faith nailing the ears is a strong and sacred metaphor. The rhyme is imperfect,—Shakspeare was not always attentive to these minor beauties. Shakspeare seems to have profited afterward by this metaphor, even more perhaps than by all the direct pieces of instruction in poetry given him so handsomely by the worthy knight. And here it may be permitted the editor to profit also by the manuscript, correcting in Shakspeare what is absolute nonsense as now printed:—
“Vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself.”
It should be its sell. Sell is saddle in Spenser and elsewhere, from the Latin and Italian.
This emendation was shewn to the late Mr. Hazlitt, an acute man at least, who expressed his conviction that it was the right reading, and added somewhat more in approbation of it. It has been suggested that this answer was borrowed from Virgil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of the manuscript. The Editor’s memory was upon the stretch to recollect the words; the learned critic supplied them:—
“Solum Æneas vocat: et vocet, oro.”
The Editor could only reply, indeed weakly, that calling and waiting are not exactly the same, unless when tradesmen rap and gentlemen are leaving town. Here the manuscript is blotted; but the probability is that it was fishmonger, rather than ironmonger, fishmongers having always been notorious cheats and liars. On the nail appears to be intended to express ready payment. The Cordilleras are mountains, we know, running through South America. Perhaps a pun was intended; or possibly it might, in the age of Elizabeth, have been a vulgar term for hanging, although we find no trace of the expression in other books. We have no clue to guide us here. It might be suggested that Shakspeare, who shines little in geographical knowledge, fancied the Cordilleras to extend into North America, had convicts in his time been transported to those colonies. Certainly, many adventurers and desperate men went thither. In that age there was prevalent a sort of cholera, on which Fracastorius, half a century before, wrote a Latin poem, employing the graceful nymphs of Homer and Hesiod, somewhat disguised, in the drudgery of pounding certain barks and minerals. An article in the Impeachment of Cardinal Wolsey accuses him of breathing in the king’s face, knowing that he was affected with this cholera. It was a great assistant to the Reformation, by removing some of the most vigorous champions that opposed it. In the Holy College it was followed by the sweating sickness, which thinned it very sorely; and several even of God’s vicegerents were laid under tribulation by it. Among the chambers of the Vatican it hung for ages, and it crowned the labours of Pope Leo XII., of blessed memory, with a crown somewhat uneasy. Sir Thomas seems to have been jealous of these two towers, certainly the finest in England. If Warwick Castle could borrow the windows from Kenilworth, it would be complete. The knight is not very courteous on its hospitality. He may, perhaps, have experienced it, as Garrick and Quin did under the present occupant’s grandfather, on whom the title of Earl of Warwick was conferred for the eminent services he had rendered to his country as one of the lords of the bedchamber to his Majesty George the Second. The verses of Garrick on his invitation and visit are remembered by many. Quin’s are less known.
He shewed us Guy’s pot, but the soup he forgot;
Not a meal did his lordship allow,
Unless we gnaw’d o’er the blade-bone of the boar,
Or the rib of the famous Dun Cow.
When Nevile the great Earl of Warwick lived here,
Three oxen for breakfast were slain,
And strangers invited to sports and good cheer,
And invited again and again.
This earl is in purse or in spirit so low,
That he with no oxen will feed ’em;
And all of the former great doings we know
Is, he gives us a book and we read ’em.
Garrick.
Stale peers are but tough morsels, and ’t were well
If we had found the fresh more eatable;
Garrick! I do not say ’t were well for him,
For we had pluck’d the plover limb from limb.
Quin. Another untoward blot! but leaving no doubt of the word. The only doubt is whether he meant the muzzle of the animal itself, or one of those leathern muzzles which are often employed to coerce the violence of ferocious animals. In besieged cities men have been reduced to such extremities. But the muzzle, in this place, we suspect, would more properly be called the blinker, which is often put upon bulls in pastures when they are vicious. This would countenance the opinion of those who are inclined to believe that Shakspeare was a Roman Catholic. His hatred and contempt of priests, which are demonstrated wherever he has introduced them, may have originated from the unfairness of Silas Gough. Nothing of that kind, we may believe, had occurred to him from friars and monks, whom he treats respectfully and kindly, perhaps in return for some such services to himself as Friar Lawrence had bestowed on Romeo,—or rather less; for Shakspeare was grateful. The words quoted by him from some sermon, now lost, prove him no friend to the filchings and swindling of popery. It is a pity that the old divines should have indulged, as they often did, in such images as this. Some readers in search of argumentative subtility, some in search of sound Christianity, some in search of pure English undefiled, have gone through with them; and their labours (however heavy) have been well repaid. Tilley valley was the favourite adjuration of James the Second. It appears in the comedies of Shakspeare. Whoreson, if we may hazard a conjecture, means the son of a woman of ill-repute. In this we are borne out by the context. It appears to have escaped the commentators on Shakspeare.
Whoreson, a word of frequent occurrence in the comedies; more rarely found in the tragedies. Although now obsolete, the expression proves that there were (or were believed to be) such persons formerly.
The Editor is indebted to two learned friends for these two remarks, which appear no less just than ingenious. Belly-ache, a disorder once not uncommon in England. Even the name is now almost forgotten; yet the elder of us may remember at least the report of it, and some, perhaps, even the complaint itself, in our school-days. It usually broke out about the cherry season; and in some cases made its appearance again at the first nutting. Sir Thomas borrowed this expression from Spenser, who thus calls Queen Elizabeth. Humboldt notices this. Pragmatical here means only precise. It is doubtful whether Doctor Buckland will agree with Sir Thomas that these petrifactions are ram’s-horns and lampreys. She was then twenty-eight years of age. Sir Thomas must have spoken of her from earlier recollections. Shakspeare was in his twentieth year. It is to be feared that his taste for venison outlasted that for matrimony, spite of this vow. It was purchased by a victualler and banker, the father or grandfather of Lord Riversdale. It happened so. The editor has been unable to discover who was the author of this very free translation of an Ode in Horace. He is certainly happy in his amplification of the stridore acuto. May it not be surmised that he was some favourite scholar of Ephraim Barnett?
